Cult of Mac

How do you increase the size of a touchscreen without increasing the screen real estate? Answer: by creating a smart bezel.

A new patent published today reveals how a future generation iPad could feature a bezel able to detect gesture and touch inputs through Force Sensing. Not only would the technique described allow gestures — such as swipes — to continue off the normal surface of the screen, but it would also allow specific virtual buttons for tasks such as scrolling to be incorporated into the iPad’s bezel.

Apple holds one of the world’s largest collection of active credit cards in the world thanks to iTunes, yet despite all that purchasing power, it has only recently begun to look into processing payments for physical goods, and PayPal is desperate to play a role in the action.

Payment industry executives say that PayPal is pitching Apple hard to let it in on the company’s rumored payment initiative, according to a report from Re/code. At this point, executives aren’t sure what type of tech Apple wants to use, or even how big a role it wants to play in the industry, but they’re willing to go as far as white-labeling their payments service, just so Apple will use it.

iPhone wallet cases are traditionally cases first and wallets second; their focus is on protecting your iPhone, and then a few pockets are added for carrying your cards and cash. But the Danny P Pocket Book for iPhone 5 and 5s is a little different.

Made from the finest Italian leather, it’s essentially a traditional wallet that has space for your iPhone, so you don’t need to make any compromises to use it. You can continue to carry as many cards as you want — there are 8 card slots in total with two additional sleeves for business cards, receipts, and anything else you might want to stuff in there — and there’s more space for bills than most of us will ever need.

The Pocket Book is available in cognac — a beautiful tan color with blue internals — and it’s priced at $129. As iPhone wallets go, it’s pretty darn good.

This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple Store Genius who answers all your questions about working at an Apple Store. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.

This week our Genius answers why the iPhone screen can be repaired in stores while the iPad has to be shipped away from special care. We also discuss whether working at the Apple Store can be turned into a solid career, plus the top 5 most annoying things customers do at the Apple Store.

Got a question you want the inside scoop on? Send us your questions and the answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.

Q: How do you move from retail to corporate?

Moving from retail to corporate is really hard. In fact, during the hiring event I went to with Apple one of the managers got up and told all the applicants that if they were looking for an easy way to get into Apple Corporate and work at Cupertino, this wasn’t it.

It’s not unheard of for someone to make that move, but it’s pretty hard. Some people dream of going to Cupertino for Genius training only to have an Apple bigwig recognize their skills and be offer them a job to work at HQ, but that’s not reality. Only managers and regional managers really have a shot at making the transition, and in those cases it’s just to manage retail efforts from corporate. However, if you’re in high school or college and want to go into software or hardware design, it wouldn’t hurt your resume ten years down the line to have some Apple Store experience when applying for a corporate job.

Q: Ever want to punch someone?

All the time! Ha ha, not really. I’m not the fist-fighting type. I’m more into cruel and unusual punishments – like plastering your MacBook with My Little Pony wallpaper if you’re a grumpy jerktard.

I’ve never come to blows with a customer, but there are times I’ve been particularly upset with management or other Apple Specialists. Occasionally a customer will freak out at you, but there are plenty of managers around to help diffuse a situation, and we’re trained to help you find the silver lining in life at the Apple Store.

Q: Do you jailbreak? Do any of your coworkers?

I’ve been an Apple fan long before I actually worked at the Apple Store, so when the first couple iPhones came out I was very into the jailbreaking scene. Nowadays, I’m not really feeling jailbreaking. Jailbreaking iOS 7 took a couple months and good hacks are just starting to come out, so there’s been little incentive to void your warranty until recently. I’m pretty happy with iOS 7 so I don’t see myself jailbreaking anytime soon.

I have a couple of coworkers who have played around with jailbreaking, but it’s usually on extra devices. A lot of jailbreak tweaks can cause problems with other system apps on the iPhone, so its pretty rare to see an Apple Genius jailbreak their main device that they’re going to be using at the store, plus it’s like totally forbidden by Apple. So why push the line when you get every app in the App Store free?

iTunes Radio now lets you create stations full of the artists and songs you like, just like Pandora. You can also add artists to the list that you don’t want playing in the station.

When you create a new iTunes Radio station, though, it’s typically named after the first song or artist that you create the station with. That’s not always what you want.

You can rename any station you like with a couple of easy taps.

Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new albums, books and movies to come out this week.

Enjoy!

Albums

Dum Dum Girls – Too True

At 31 minutes in length, half of the 10 tracks on Dum Dum Girls’ third album, Too True, barely make it past the three-minute mark, which is great in that the songs take you somewhere fast but Dee Dee’s commanding, playful voice leaves you wanting to stay a little longer.

iTunes – $8.99

Actress – Ghettoville

While Darren J. Cunningham announced that Ghettoville, his fourth album as Actress, would be the project’s final album, Ghettoville is supposed to be the sonic sequel to Actress’ first LP that came out five years ago. The sound is dark, tense complex and very obscure. Great for listening at home in the dark to unwind.

iTunes – $9.99

Supreme Cuts – Divine Ecstasy

Before combining forces to form Supreme Cuts, Mike Perry and Austin Kjeultes tried to make it as solo rap producers, so naturally their second album relies heavily on a lot of guest vocal performances to tie the productions together. The end result are 14 tracks you could imagine some of hip-hop’s biggest names rapping on.

iTunes – $9.99

Books:

Call Me Burroughs: A Life
by Barry Miles

Counter-cultural writer and artist William Burroughs one of the most influential characters in the Beat era and definitely the strangest cat in the bunch. He painted, made collages, took thousands of photos, wrote novels but also had an obsession with Scientology, UFO abductions, took tons of drugs, and had weird theories that giant intergalactic insects that control everything, making Barry Miles biography one of the most interesting reads of the month.

iTunes – $16.99

Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West
by Bryce Andrews

Taking off and living on the western edge of civilization is kind of one of my fantasies. Bryce Andrews has actually done it, ditching life as a city kid to becoming a ranch hand in the windswept Sun Ranch in southwest Montana. His memoir describes what it’s like to live in one of the few places where the West still feels wild, building fences, riding, roping, and just plain old getting your hands dirty.

iTunes – $12.99

The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently
by Sunni Brown

If you’ve ever been busted by a teacher for doodling in school, rest assured that your great mind is kin to Einstein, John F. Kennedy, and Henry Ford, all of whom were doodle-crazy. Sunni Brown’s new book Doodle Revolution busts the myths of doodling and reveals how the silly little drawings lining the edges of your notebook is really deep thinking in disguise. So take that with you to detention, kids.

iTunes – $14.99

Movies:

Ender’s Game

The Seabirds and Ponies are set to clash in the Big Game this week, but the stakes of the Lombardi Trophy are nothing compared to the consequences facing Ender and his team of elite young soldiers if they don’t successfully defend earth from a terrifying alien species.
iTunes – $19,99

Schooled: The Price of College Sports

Pro football players will be all over your TV this weekend, but don’t forget about the other professional athletes that will be invading the living room this spring. No not the NBA, or NHL, we’re talking about the huge business of college sports. Sam Rockwell narrates Schooled, which gives a comprehensive look at how money has influenced collegiate basketball and football, and how the rights of student-athletes have been compromised in the process.

iTunes – $9.99

Off The Rez

While phenomenally talented college athletes take the stage in Schooled, Off the Rez follows Shoni Schimmel, a high school basketball star living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon. The documentary reveals the changes in Shoni’s life after her mom takes a job as a Portland  high-school coach. Leaving the rez, provides a host of new challenges for Shoni who’s out to prove Native American woman can be champions off the rez too.

iTunes – $12.99

Episodic noir-thriller adventure game, The Wolf Among Us, gets its second episode next week with “Smoke & Mirrors.”

Bigby Wolf is hell-bent on solving the murders revealed in Episode One, and will stop at nothing to get at the truth.

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include some collectors of videos and interesting articles, an app to help you get better sleep, and another that might give you something to do while you’re doing that.

Here you go:

Spender: Expenses Only — Finance — Free $0.99 [thanks, commenters]

If I want to be reductionist here, money management has two general components: maximizing income and minimizing expenses. For many people, the second part is more difficult because sometimes you really, absolutely need to own that box set of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

Spender: Expenses Only is a quick and easy way to itemize and organize your bills, and it even tells you how much you’re spending on average daily. And once you look at your costs in that vacuum and see just how much you’re blowing on Pez and action figures without seeing the income to offset it, you might want to change some things.

Spender – Expenses Only

Inlight — Lifestyle — Free

If you have a few minutes to stare at your phone, and you don’t really feel like watching a video, you might want to look into Inlight. It’s a really good-looking app that collects articles from the Internet in one place and lets you browse by categories like “Me Time” and “Nourish.”

So that’s a little weird, but I found a lot of interesting stuff in there. For example, now I know, as a man, which 21 compliments I crave. And that’s just news I can use.

Inlight

5by — Entertainment — Free

Everyone likes funny and/or interesting videos from the Internet, but who has time to go look for them? Especially when you just have a few minutes to kill while you take care of business in your “second office?” StumbleUpon is here to help with 5by.

The video aggregating app has been out for a little while, but it just got a shiny, updated look that makes it look all current and fabulous. You can find videos based on what you’re doing and how long you have, and it’ll just stream them along to you. So don’t worry; you don’t have to just sit there staring at your shoes anymore.

Or like your knees, or whatever.

5by

2014 Team USA: Road to Sochi — Sports — Free

The 2014 Winter Olympics are coming up fast, and if you feel like a bad American for not having any idea who is competing on our various national teams, The U.S. Olympic Committee has an app for you.

Here in one simple interface, you can find athlete bios, news, team rosters, and more handy information to prepare you to watch people in ridiculous shape do incredible things while you sit on your couch and create new and elaborate curses for various judges.

It’s the true spirit of the Olympics, really.

2014 Team USA: Road to Sochi

Best Sleep Hygiene — Health & Fitness — Free

Alright, so “sleep hygiene” is kind of a weird way of describing one’s sleeping habits, but this is a pretty useful app, regardless.

It starts out with a questionnaire that asks about your pre-bed routine, including how much TV you watch, alcohol consumption, and when you ate your last full meal, and then it ranks your results and offers suggestions for how you might make your sleepytime more effective.

My results put me in the bottom 25 percent of respondents, which is probably why I spend all day lapsing in and out of consciousnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn–huh? I’m up. What are we doing?

Best Sleep Hygiene

Lucid Dream Ultimate — Utilities — Free

While you’re getting all that sleep we talked about in the last app, you might as well pay some attention to your dreams.

Lucid Dream Ultimate is a dream journal and reality checker that plays a noise during the day that cues you to remind yourself that you’re awake. It’ll send you the same noise throughout the night; the idea is that when you hear the noise in your dream, you’ll realize you’re dreaming, and then you can start the important business of conjuring up all the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephants you’ve ever wanted.

Plus one of the tones is an Inception-esque “BWAAAAAAAH,” and that’s just straight-up magical.

Lucid Dream Ultimate

Dungeon Keeper on iOS is a free-to-play re-imagining of the classic Bullfrog Productions/Peter Molyneux PC game from the late ’90s. I really loved old school Dungeon Keeper as a kid, and it is one of the few tower defense/strategy titles I’ve ever enjoyed. So, no pressure on this iOS version, right?

Unfortunately, the mobile version of Dungeon Keeper suffers from very predictable free-to-play problems. Expanding your dungeon was never totally carefree in previous version of the game, but as your imps work to clear out 3×3 or 4×4 spaces for new rooms, they’ll quickly plow through soft rock which takes a matter of seconds but suddenly run up against walls that can take an entire day to knock down! So the breakdown is a few seconds, four hours, or 24 hours. That’s not well balanced at start.

Slip — Utilities — Free

Slip knows that exchanging business cards can be annoying. You have to find your cards and then take theirs and then maybe jam it into the back of the thing where you keep your cards, and hopefully it fits. And then later, you find their card and can’t remember why you’d met in the first place.

So instead of that, Slip uses Bluetooth to exchange contact information wirelessly. You go in and toggle which bits of information you want to share and just flip it over to another user with a single swipe. You can also text or e-mail it to people without Slip, but that’s not as much fun.

Slip – Yodel Code

I love developer Halfbrick’s endless runner Jetpack Joyride as much as anyone, but it always felt like it was missing something. And I never realized what it was until very recently. And then it hit me: baleen.

Baleen didn’t actually hit me; that would be gross. It’s all stringy.

Moby’s Revenge is a new endless title about a cute whale who escapes from an aquarium and has to avoid harpoons, mines, nets, and boats on his frantic and infinite swim toward freedom and wholesale slaughter of evil, Seaworld-running humans.

It sounds dark, but it isn’t.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll change your iPhone’s wallpaper on a regular basis to keep things fresh, but finding a good one isn’t always easy. At least that was the case — until Wallgram came along. Wallgram isn’t just another photo bank full of images; it uses Instagram photos uploaded by your friends to create beautiful parallax wallpapers.

The immensely popular SwiftKey keyboard makes its debut on iOS today via a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. It promises to be the fastest way to make notes on an iPhone and iPad, and it boasts features like Evernote syncing and multilingual typing. It’s also completely free.

I swear, the more I learn about the Mac OS X operating system, the more there is to know!

There are so many little hidden key strokes on the Mac that help you do all sorts of things, and there’s really no way to find them out.

This little gem is something I just found out today, and I’ve been sending you OS X Tips for the better part of two years.

To get rid of the system menubar icons, you can drop into each System Preference pane and uncheck the “Show in Menu Bar” option, or you can just do this.

Tesco Mobile has today announced that it is giving all contract customers in the U.K. 4G LTE services at no extra cost. They will continue to pay the same price they’ve been paying for 3G, but they’ll get significantly faster speeds in 4G areas throughout the country.

Facebook today announced a new standalone iPhone app called Paper, and you’ll be pleased to hear it’s nothing like any of the Facebook apps that came before it. Paper’s main focus is to make all the news you’re interested in easy to access it, but it’s much more than just a newsreader; in fact, it does enough to replace the regular Facebook app for more users.

If there’s one place you can expect to see cutting edge technology at its finest it’s at a Dutch flower park, right?

For gamers, the question of whether Nintendo will/should develop titles for smartphones has been hotly debated in recent weeks — with reports suggesting either way seemingly being shot down on a daily basis.

In  a reversal of a previous denial (got that?), Nintendo has now confirmed that it will use smart devices as a platform for apps and promotions, after all — but that there are currently no plans to port core titles over to Android or iOS.

Apple could open a sapphire glass manufacturing facility in Arizona as early as February, according to recently published correspondence between the company and state regulators.

Analyst Matt Margolis unearthed documents that mention the Mesa plant — described as “Project Cascade” — and note that it would be used to manufacturer “a critical new sub-component” for a future Apple product.

Carrot Fit is the new app-with-attitude from the makers of Carrot To-Do and Carrot Alarm.

Welcoming you with a message of “Greetings, tubby human” from “your new fitness overlord”, Carrot Fit is a harsh-but-hilarious taskmaster dedicated to making weight loss suck a little bit less.

As the developers explain, “Carrot is a sadistic AI construct with one simple goal: to transform your flabby carcass into a Grade A specimen of the human race. She will do whatever it takes – including threatening, inspiring, ridiculing, and bribing you – to make this happen.”

When I reviewed the Lollipod iPhone tripod, I mentioned that the super-light support would also make a great portable lighting stand. It seems I wasn’t the only person to notice this, and now the folks behind the Lollipod have added the Faith Speedlight stand to their lineup. And man, it looks every bit as well-thought-out as the original Lollipod.

Having recently purchased both Nest and AI startup DeepMind, Google is currently on a high tech spending spree. Even Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson has claimed that the search giant’s recent acquisitions have helped it take the lead over Apple when it comes to innovation in 2014.

But Apple is also putting its $159 billion worth of cash and investments to good use by carrying out its fair share of acquisitions.

When I lived in an my crumbling old apartment in Barcelona, I had more USB-charing devices that I had power points in my office. And even in the relatively modernity of an East German apartment block, I don’t want to plug in a separate box my iPhone, iPad, bike lights, Kindle… Etc. What I need is the Tunewear TUNEMAX 5USB Charger, a five-way USB charger with a name a rapper could be proud of.

Image Blender is one of my favorite iOS apps. It’s a single-purpose tool that lets you combine two photos by stacking them and choosing the blend mode to get the effect and the opacity you want. If you ever wanted to take a photo and make it look like it was printed onto an old sheet of paper, or to, uh, make an astronaut sit in front of a pile of red sand, then Image Blender is for you.

And now Image Blender 2 is for you, too. The update adds some good functionality, but the best part is that – thanks to an iOS 7 makeover – it no longer looks horrible.

If you’re a person who needs to balance lots of appointments on a daily basis, but hasn’t come across Mynd Smart Calendar yet, it’s something that’s well worth looking into.

The free app — which describes itself as an “intelligent mobile calendar” — accurately identifies the places you’re going on any given day and then predicts how much buffer time you’re going to need to schedule between meetings given the typical traffic levels at that time of day. As you get closer to appointments, the app reminds you when it is that you need to leave and even launches your preferred navigation app.